


levels feeling like days

by localdisasterisk



Category: Half-Life VR but the AI is Self-Aware - Fandom
Genre: Discussions Of Benrey, Dissociation, Fluff and Angst, G-Man as a Good Dad, Gen, Grief/Mourning, I sure do write a lot of mechanical/technical pieces huh!!, Malware Tommy Coolatta, Post-Canon, Trauma, Video Game Mechanics, unreality, y'know? for someone who doesn't play video games or understand code?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-21
Updated: 2021-01-21
Packaged: 2021-03-12 18:20:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28889766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/localdisasterisk/pseuds/localdisasterisk
Summary: Gordon's sitting on the couch with Tommy while Joshie plays in the other room. Everything's really fucking loud right now, even though his hearing's shot at the best of times, and that's all– fine. It's fine! It'shappening.It's real for him and he's in charge of his own body, and itishis own body. Goddamnit, after everything,this is his own fucking body!Everything is too loud but everything is real. Gordon is real. Gordon Freeman is real, and he is watching a movie with Tommy. Gordon Freeman—The world around him solidifies into graphics. It all looks nice, he marvels, looking through Gordon Freeman's eyes as he waits for someone to pick up Gordon Freeman and move him through the world. He'd do it, but he's just an over-glorified camera."Freeman?" Any second now, the player will start the game. "Gordon. Look at me?"No one pushes Gordon Freeman through the movements, so he makes an effort to play the part as best he can.
Relationships: Tommy Coolatta & Gordon Freeman, Tommy Coolatta & The G-Man
Comments: 5
Kudos: 53





	levels feeling like days

**Author's Note:**

> fanfiction dot online doesn't have an html editor and it's way easier to be complicit in awful things that work than bad things that don't. so. here I am again even though ao3 is fine with rpf child porn! cool. great. love it here.

Tommy is babysitting Joshua. (Tommy is looking after Stop-Calling-Me-Mister-It's-Fucking-Weird-Dude Freeman, too, but Freeman always gets upset when anyone tells him that, so the Neo-Science Team has agreed not to tell him that.) Joshua is crashing Tonka trucks into each other on Tommy's kitchen floor – he said that the living room's carpet was all wrong for Playing Traffic – with a single-minded focus that reminds Tommy of a kitten looking at a laser. Tommy and Freeman are sitting on the living room couch and watching TV. (Sort of. Loosely. Freeman is just staring at the screen, and Tommy is watching TV _and_ lightly scratching his fingers against Freeman's scalp as a grounding exercise. He's multitasking!) A car blows up as Joshua makes a very loud shout-noise accompanied by plastic collision sounds, and Freeman's nails dig into Tommy's calf, and he presses his head into Tommy's shoulder like he's trying to sink into quicksand. "Are you okay?" Tommy asks, quiet.

"Why were you his friend?" Freeman answers, which means _no._ There's only one Him that Freeman ever means when he says it like that. Tommy leans his head against Freeman's for a second as he thinks, and then Freeman cuts across anything Tommy _might_ have said with, "Not– I don't want, fuckin', like, Black Mesa– Half Life– _you know._ Not... why were you friends with him; why did the Antagonist like you?" Freeman's voice breaks a little at 'antagonist' and Tommy doesn't wince.

This... takes more thought. A gun fires and Joshua makes a low humming gurgle as more plastic strikes the tile. Freeman turns his face into Tommy's neck. "I'd ed– gl, uh, found my d– muh, uhhh, G-Man. Already. " There are too many words all trying to come out at once, and there are _definitely_ too many words for Freeman to hear right now, so they stumble and trip over each other on their ways out of Tommy's mouth, but he licks his lips and continues, "But I wanted other progr—" cold against his skin, where Freeman breathes in— "pruh, uh, puh, peep– people like me? And I f– I found Buh– uh, Barney. I don't... I didn't pick their name." Plastic hits plastic hits kitchen tile. A woman screams. Freeman needs to cut his nails.

(The world is different, here, now. Everything is different, stretched out thin across planes that Tommy can't quite get out of his vision. The gridlocked lines move the orange ball joints of the Protagonist's elbows and knees as Freeman curls into him. Tommy doesn't have a self beneath this skin. He can't see himself laid over himself, not how he sees Scientist 1 above Dr. Coomer, Scientist 2 above Dr. Bubby, Scientist 4 above Darnold, and, and all the others. NPCs above real people, like Joshua and the Deli lady who gives him a friends-and-family discount because they're both gay and the old man at the dog park with two dachshunds who waves hello every time he sees Tommy. Tommy met them differently, through or after the game, making it less strange. It _is_ strange, as strange as a witch with a white cat, to see G-Man overlaid across his father. They're different people, even though Tommy made his father out of the G-Man. He was as much of a child as any computer program could be, and he was scared and alone and lost; finding a file with a suit and tie and glowing eyes and distant, complicated motives and making _that_ into a caring paternal figure says some worrying things about who exactly made Tommy, but Mr. Coolatta is the best dad Tommy could have asked for. Could have made.) 

Freeman clicks the TV off, breathing deep for a handful of seconds, and Tommy realizes it must have been too loud. After the comparative quiet has settled in like a new neighbor, Freeman asks, "Did you know they'd be..?" He trails off quickly. _Did you know they'd be Bad?_

Tommy skritches at Freeman's scalp a little more with his fingertips and a little less with his nails, a stalling tactic, and Freeman sighs into it. Joshua makes car sounds, and then car crash sounds, and then little happy burbles that sound like they should be pink as a strawberry. 

(Freeman called Benrey malware for weeks, when he talked about them at all, until Tommy told him that Benrey was just a glitch. A symptom of the _real_ computer virus, a splinter off of a Trojan horse. Freeman asked what the hell Tommy was talking about, and Tommy asked if he thought that a game from 1998 would have a scientist named Dr. Tommy Coolatta. If he thought it was strange that Tommy had access to images outside of The Game, and an understanding of what was going on that never glitched out. Freeman didn't look at him for a long three months. Tommy kept his face even and his voice cheerful, and he sat in the aftermath of his first friend's deletion like a frog soaking in a pond. If he stepped outside of the feelings, his skin would crack as he dried up and died and felt the deletion starting to affect _him,_ too, and—) "He was just my– my friend, M– uh, Freeman. Did _you_ know how they were as, as soon as you met him?" Freeman squeezes his eyes shut (Tommy can see it in the planes, even if he can't see Freeman from where he's hiding in Tommy's side) and breathes in and out, measured as evenly as inch marks on a ruler.

Quiet.

...more quiet. Too much quiet from Freeman, too soon after talking about The Game. "Freeman?" Tommy asks softly. Freeman doesn't answer, and Tommy leans back a little to look at him. Freeman stays where he is, pulling away just enough to put space between them but not enough to look up, and everything about him is too... measured. Even. Plastic. It feels wrong to reduce the man who is so much more than file names and a Wikipedia entry under Protagonist down to a first name that barely even fits, but Tommy murmurs, "Gordon. Look at me?" Freeman does so, following instructions and more blank than a freshly-cleaned slate. 

(Tommy wants to extend himself away from this model, out of these planes, to seep into the Player's hard drive and root around, destroy and sink vicious, dumb, hungry worms into every last file they have. The Player turned on the game, and Tommy turned the sleeping bundles of code into his friend. They turned Gordon Freeman into a person and Benrey into an obstacle, and Tommy loves Freeman, but how is he supposed to feel anything but loss? His first friend is gone, and his newer friend is hurting, and Tommy can't _do_ anything. And Tommy's the reason they're all broken like this in the first place. Viruses replicate, viruses spread. Tommy is a virus, and self-awareness is a symptom; he's infected everyone he can manage – he isn't sure if he's sorry.) 

"You're here." (An unvoiced NPC rumbles noises to itself. An empty model rests its hand on a filled one. Plastic hits plastic and code hits code.) "You have fre– f– uhh, you can– can do what you want! Okay?" (Tommy is looking into black glass as the model crouches precariously on a ratty couch from a future game. Tommy is looking into his friend's brown eyes and seeing himself reflected as they sit together on a plush sofa.) "Do you w... should I ask Joshua to come here?"

Freeman leans his head into Tommy's hand minutely. Tommy calls, "Joshua! Come tell us ab– uh, Playing Traffic!"

(A model, shrunken down manually, runs into the Protagonist, half-clipping together. Tommy wraps one arm around Freeman's shoulders and the other around Joshua's, and the three of them sit together as Joshua signs, visibly curbing his excitement while he explains the details of his Traffic.)

In the gridlines, Mr. Coolatta sits down beside Tommy, legs crossing primly at the ankle, and Tommy lets himself smile.

>Hi dad.  
_> Hello, Tommy. Is Mr. Freeman quite. Alright?  
_>I think he's dissociating again :(  
>We talked about benrey and the game, and I explained how I woke them up.  
_> Hm. With all due respect, I am not... shocked. Such discussions would seem to be an... expected trigger.  
_>...yeah :(  
>But I don't want not to tell him!! He deserves to know!!! And he asked about it :(  
_> These sorts of things are, Complicated, Tommy.  
_>I know, dad.

Mr. Coolatta sets a thin hand on Tommy's shoulder through the planes. "Car went _boom boom boom!"_ Joshua signs, eyes flashing and half-abandoning the story for an excited flap, and Tommy watches as Freeman smiles encouragingly. It's play-acted, but out of a need to be a good father, not a good protagonist, so Tommy squeezes his friend's shoulder. (The Player must have their reasons for creating, wholesale, a child for their Protagonist, but Tommy doesn't care about them. He just cares that Joshua was relatively simple to put together and that his dad took over most of the worldbuilding. He just cares that this version of his friend– that _his friend,_ because all other versions aren't that– looks at this child and feels like himself, rather than like Gordon Freeman.)

_> I suppose it is Your fault that I have such fondness for this... child. Or am I mistaken, My Progeny? _

Tommy has to set his volume to 0 so that he won't laugh, loud and barking with sheepish acknowledgment. Joshua notices his smile and beams up at him, repeating, "Daddy saved _everybody!"_ Freeman huffs at that, a small, genuine smile on his face. "Superhero dad," Joshua adds for good measure. 

>If you hadn't liked kids, you might have left the drive!  
_> I was not, accusing you of giving me some, negative trait, Tommy. My source code would have, indeed... left you, from what I understand.  
>Instead, I found myself with a brilliant son.  
_>daaaaaaad :')

Mr. Coolatta pauses, putting a hand over one of the planes and scowling.

 _> Your friends are attempting to break through the... 'planes' that have manifested here. If I don't want them to fall out of the sandbox entirely, I will need to_  
>go do your job, dad!! we'll be fine here <3  
_> I love you as well, Tommy Coolatta. _

"You know I can tell when you do that, right?" Freeman whispers, making an effort at subtlety, and Tommy blinks at him. "Your dad can stop in whenever, man. It's– creepy, but fine." Joshua's explaining the rules of Playing Traffic, and he doesn't seem to have noticed that Tommy's zoned out to talk to someone who isn't there, but Freeman is looking at him with tired, warm eyes. It's half for show, but the fondness there is so _real_ (even amidst the HEV's helmet, even amidst the glitching model) that Tommy doesn't know what to do besides knocking their foreheads together, and Freeman sighs, shaky and himself.

Tommy wonders how much of his friend is cribbed from the Player and how much is his own virus infecting the files. The Player, through Freeman, was always tactile, but since Tommy and Mr. Coolatta put the sandbox together, that's only grown more notable. If Freeman isn't hugging him, he's picking up Joshua or propping his arm on Dr. Coomer's shoulders or hesitating about touching Dr. Bubby before the doctor flicks him in the arm and drags him in for whatever affection Freeman was debating. The NPC who has the personality of a professionally-trained therapist laid across them concluded it was likely a pre-existing skin hunger made more pronounced by the rapid readjustment to tactile stimulation after a month of touch deadened by the HEV suit. Maybe it's just that – a human explanation attaching itself to the code. Neither of those are really Tommy's area of expertise.

They stay where they are, huddled together, and Tommy watches as the conversation draws Freeman back into himself, back into being self-aware instead of a shell, and he makes the grid as close to transparent as he can manage. The reality doesn't matter right now. Tommy doesn't need to be a virus when Joshua calls him "Uncle" and pokes him in the chest accusingly for not helping with sound effects. The black glass fades, and Tommy could almost mistake the joints for Crayola's Washable Non-Toxic Marker doodles on perfectly human skin, and Tommy pretends he can't see the reality beneath the sandbox. If Freeman– if Gordon is more than the Protagonist, then Tommy can be more than the malware that put them all here. "Love you, man," Gordon says when Tommy picks Joshua up to put him down for a nap, and Tommy smiles.

"Yeah," he says, which makes Gordon laughs and roll his eyes. "I luh– l, uhh, love you, too." Joshua sniffles in his sleep and leans in a way that means Tommy has to discretely grab at one of the points of articulation on his chest so the child won't topple out of his arms and onto the ground. "Sleep tight!" Tommy tells him, and Joshua sniffles again, now safely tucked against Tommy's chest.

Joshua's room has a mobile above the bed, and the colors on it read _it's safe to sleep, my friend,_ but Tommy knows that's an accident. Green, blue, red, and back again is just a predetermined loop. It's not Sweet Voice; there's no meaning in it. (Would Benrey help Gordon back into the sandbox if they got to be themself? Would he sing Joshua to sleep? Would he take the spare room in Tommy's house? Would Tommy still feel so alone if his first friend was still there? Would they be the same as they were, or would the Player have sunk their scripts too deep? Joshua's soft face flattens into shrunken polygons, and Tommy forces reality back down. What-ifs are about as useful as ice water in a snowstorm, and he doesn't need them.)

 _"the crash was twenty years ago,"_ Benrey would say if they were here, _"you need to move on, chad."_

Joshua's room is quiet.

**Author's Note:**

> having a lot of feelings about gordon as The Protagonist as per usual. also, malware tommy good. also also. tommy and benrey best friends, and it fucks tommy up when they die. thank you goodnight.


End file.
